Snow in the Long Island forecast; PSEG says they’ll be ready

PSEG Long Island braced for another round of wet, windy weather forecast for Wednesday, checking equipment Monday and keeping crews on alert for power blackouts even as they continued to restore electricity for customers.

“As with every approaching storm, we are monitoring the weather, arranging staffing and ensuring all vehicles and equipment are ready to operate in line with the predicted weather,” said PSEG Long Island Spokeswoman Brooke Houston. “Many of the measures we put in place for the Friday-Saturday storm will remain in place for the upcoming weather, such as the staging area to receive additional personnel, if needed.”

The latest forecast calls for between 4 and 7 inches of snow for much of Long Island Wednesday, according to a Monday night update by the National Weather Service.

Predictions of a powerful winter storm Wednesday followed a wet and soggy weekend on Long Island as a nor’easter brought heavy rain, high winds, rounds of coastal flooding, and left thousands without power.

The storm also hit hard from Virginia to New England. Like PSEG Long Island, crews across several states worked throughout Monday to restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. The storm has been blamed for nine deaths, including two children struck by trees.

At the height of the storm, more than 2 million homes and businesses were without electricity. By Monday afternoon, about 440,000 customers were still without power.

Most of the 128,000 Long Island outages from the Friday and Saturday storm had been corrected by midnight Sunday. Several hundred of those occurred after Friday’s storm, Houston said.

As of 4:30 p.m. Monday, 88 customers who lost power during the storm remained without electricity, she said. Houston expected power would be restored to all of those customers Monday night.

She said calls continued to come in Monday from people who had to have their power restored for a second time.

“We’ve had customers where we’ve restored power, a limb comes down, and six or seven hours later we’ve had to go back,” Houston said.

Crews worked through the night to restore power for as many storm-affected customers as possible, she said.

In many cases, Houston said, “several phases” of repair were needed to detangle wires and remove trees to allow electric work to be completed. Houston said larger outages involving entire neighborhoods were given priority.

With AP